The penny dreadfuls (cheap serialised weekly novels) were swift to take up the vampire theme, and during the 1840s, an anonymous penny dreadful called Varney the Vampyre or, The Feast of Blood, appeared regularly, each instalment offering similar grisly horrors. The standard of the writing is not high, but it was incredibly popular. There are two possible authors – either James Malcolm Rymer or Thomas Pecket Prest.
The description of Varney, the anti-hero, is not one of seduction, but of horror. “The figure turns half round, and the light falls upon its face. It is perfectly white – perfectly bloodless. The eyes look like polished tin; the lips are drawn back, and the principal feature next to those dreadful eyes is the teeth – the fearful looking teeth – projecting like those of some wild animal, hideously, glaringly white, and fang-like. It approaches the bed with a strange, gliding movement. It clashes together the long nails that literally appear to hang from the finger ends. No sound comes from its lips. Is she going mad – that young and beautiful girl exposed to so much terror? she has drawn up all her limbs; she cannot even now say help. The power of articulation is gone, but the power of movement has returned to her; she can draw herself slowly along to the other side of the bed from that towards which the hideous appearance is coming.”58
The young girl referred to is Varney’s first victim in this “feast of blood”, and here for the first time in English is the mention of fang-like teeth. “With a plunge he seizes her neck in his fang-like teeth – a gush of blood, and a hideous sucking noise follows. The girl has swooned, and the vampyre is at his hideous repast!”
The pattern is repeated endlessly – girls are attacked, the vampire is killed, he comes to life when the rays of a full moon fall upon his body – and so on ad infinitum. The tale is clearly heavily influenced by Polidori’s novel, but is more domestic in nature. Extensive portions of the story deal with the shock and horror of the attacks in dialogue that looks as though it came from a rather bad soap opera. However, the popularity of this work continued strong among the masses… until the end of the 19th century.
One dramatic change has occurred in the status of vampires. No longer are they Slavic peasants, but rather noblemen who move within the most elegant of societies. Although Sir Frances Varney is a hideous-looking creature, he too is of the aristocracy.
The next significant English tale of vampirism was written by Sheridan Le Fanu – Carmilla, first published in the magazine Dark Blue in 1871, and published the following year in a collection of short stories entitled In A Glass Darkly. It is a work of considerable literary merit, although it is perhaps the most daring vampire novel of its time. The vampire of this story is a female, again an aristocrat, but her appetites lead her not to prey upon men, but upon women… and in a rather erotic way, at that.